Joanne Pope Melish. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and 1780-1860. Ithaca, New
York and London, England: Cornell University Press, 1998. 285 pp. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-08014-3413-6.
Reviewed by Vivien Sandlund (Hiram College)
Published on H-SHEAR (April, 1999)
In the long and rich historiography of North American slavery, relatively few scholars have explored the
subject of slavery in New England or the impact of slavery and emancipation in the region on the racial attitudes of New Englanders. Joanne Pope Melish’s book
Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in
New England, 1780-1860 seeks, in her words, to put “slavery and the painful process of gradual emancipation back
into the history of New England (p. 200).” Melish views
as a blind spot the assumption by previous scholars that
slavery in New England was peripheral to the economic,
social, or political development of the region. She argues that New England slavery had a far more powerful impact on the thinking of New Englanders than they
wanted to believe, and their longstanding view of the region as “free and white” has been a kind of historical amnesia, an effort to erase slavery and black people from the
history of the region. That erasure of black people, she argues, resulted directly from white anxiety and confusion
about how to view free blacks in their midst and what to
do with or about them.
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Melish
writes, New England whites gradually resolved these
questions by coming to regard blacks as inherently inferior and in need of control. She argues that a clear ideology of race thus first emerged in late eighteenth and early
nineteenth-century New England, in response to gradual emancipation. New Englanders, she argues, gradually came to view “racial” characteristics as immutable,
inherited, and located in the body, and to view the black
and white “races” as hierarchical and largely opposite in
nature. Such a view permitted white New Englanders to
seek to expell or erase black people, both literally and
figuratively, from their region.
Melish’s book makes an important contribution to
the literature on slavery and abolition and fills a significant gap in our understanding of how slavery in
New England affected both that region and the nation.
Through her use of various local sources including town
records, court records, slaveholders’ diaries, and the letters, narratives, and freedom petitions of slaves, Melish brings the reader into the world of RevolutionaryMelish maintains that white New Englanders’ views era New England masters and slaves. She illuminates
of black people emerged directly from their experiences their daily interactions and offers insightful interpretawith blacks living in bondage and from their association tions of how masters and slaves each understood the
of blackness with slavery. She writes that the unset- meaning of slavery and emancipation. She makes a comtling process of gradual emancipation in the region after pelling case that slavery was indeed significant in the
the American Revolution stirred white fears that disor- New England economy and society. Using, among other
derly blacks would threaten the new republic. Whereas evidence, racist broadsides from the region, she also illusblacks assumed that they would become free and inde- trates clearly the willingness of many white New Englanpendent citizens, whites assumed that blacks still needed ders to denigrate, harass, and seek to erase black people
to be controlled. She also argues that white people ex- in the decades after the Revolution.
perienced anxiety about racial identity, freedom, and
While Melish is right that most white New Englanservitude, wondering if freedom would turn black peoders probably did wish black people would go away in
ple white and if white people could become slaves.
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the years of the early republic, she may overstate the extent to which New England whites were in agreement on
this. She correctly observes that many white New Englanders supported the movement to colonize blacks outside the United States, particularly in Africa. But New
England also produced a movement for immediate abolition that was explicitly opposed to colonization and demanded the right of free blacks to live as free and equal
citizens of the United States. William Lloyd Garrison of
Boston was probably the best-known white abolitionist
in the country after 1830, and he was also a passionate opponent of colonization and a strong champion of
the rights of free blacks in North America. Free blacks
loved Garrison. A host of other New England activists
stood with him, demanding the inclusion of free blacks
as equal citizens. If most New Englanders sought to expell or eliminate blacks from their midst, these radical
abolitionists often embraced the freed slaves, sought to
educate them, published their narratives, and even, as in
the case of Frederick Douglass, hired them as abolitionist speakers. One goal of the abolitionist efforts was to
show the public that black people were fully human, able
to be educated, and deserving of all the rights that whites
had. Thus, well into the nineteenth century, a segment
of white New Englanders actively resisted the view that
blacks were inherently inferior and different from whites,
and they fought to educate blacks for life as full American citizens. If, as Melish argues, New England whites
sought to eradicate blacks, this process was contested by
some whites as well as blacks.
oping a new ideology of race because of its early experience with slave emancipation. However, the struggle
to define the meaning of emancipation and the fundamental nature and place of blacks was also going on in
the upper South. There, manumissions increased during and after the American Revolution, and the growing numbers of free blacks increased white anxiety. Indeed, anxiety there was more pronounced than in New
England, because of the larger black population. Colonization was also very popular in the upper South, and
much of the strongest and most persistent support for
colonization came from that region. In contrast to New
England, opponents of slavery in the upper South never
embraced the idea that freed slaves ought to remain in
the United States, and antislavery activists in the upper South always combined efforts at gradual emancipation with plans for colonization. The process that Melish describes of racializing identity and seeking to expell blacks may thus have been taking place simultaneously in New England and the upper South. A comparative study of emancipation efforts in the two regions
would be illuminating. Of course, the upper South did
not achieve gradual emancipation, and over time, antislavery activism and even voluntary manumission there
were largely choked off.
Melish’s book takes the reader through the process by
which white New Englanders, through their responses
to slavery, emancipation, and black people, created the
myth of themselves and their region as free and white.
Melish’s angle of vision and her argument are both fresh,
Melish’s most important contribution may be to the and she offers new insights and raises new questions
emerging body of literature on how North Americans about how the end of slavery led to a new construction
constructed and made use of an ideology of race. Here of race in North America. This is a terrific book, one that
she pushes to locate precisely when and how Americans all scholars of slavery, abolition, and the early republic
racialized difference and came to define blackness and absolutely must read. Enjoy this one; I certainly did.
whiteness as fixed, immutable, biological categories. Her
Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This
answer, that this process took place in New England durwork may be copied for non-profit educational use if
ing gradual emancipation, is new and surprising.
proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other
Melish suggests that New England was first in devel- permission, please contact [email protected].
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Citation: Vivien Sandlund. Review of Melish, Joanne Pope, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and 1780-1860.
H-SHEAR, H-Net Reviews. April, 1999.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2988
Copyright © 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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